The Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board on Wednesday night formally approved a five-year contract with Conner Prairie, allowing a teacher-in-residence to conduct special lessons for fourth-grade students in all 12 HSE district elementary schools.
The contract was many months in the making, with several proposals sent back and forth between the school board and the Conner Prairie board.
Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness was on hand for the contract vote, calling himself more of a cheerleader on the sidelines on this project, urging both sides to get this agreement.
“Integrating our community into the classroom, and our classroom into the community, is something that is a differentiator among school districts,” Fadness told school board members. The mayor said this contract is one more step in working with teachers and HSE administrators, and he says many more actions along these lines are coming.
HSE teacher Amy Murch will be the first teacher-in-residence at Conner Prairie.
“I’ll mention Amy Murch because she has literally been working side-by-side with our educators and with your [HSE’s] staff and developed a dynamic curriculum,” said Conner Prairie CEO Norman Burns. “We think this will be one-of-a-kind, a national model, not only for museums but also for school systems.”
HSE officials say lessons will focus on scientific concepts of simple machines and the influence it had on transportation and life in during 1830s in Indiana. Students will be able to investigate different transportation systems and identify concepts of force that affect their motion. They will also be constructing boats to float in the White River and designing interview questions for the interpreters in Prairie Town about what simple machines they use in their daily life.
Mayor Fadness told the board this is one step toward creating his vision of a City Wide Campus.
“The next thing is to broaden the scale of this to allow the entire business community to be a part moving forward,” Fadness said.